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Who Are the Major New gTLD Applicants and… (Part One: Famous Four Media)

This article is the personal analysis by a new gTLD consultant who has been following the ICANN new gTLD program from the beginning but with a Frenchman's perspective. I recently read an article which made me smile because entitled "the top 10 new gTLDs to follow in 2014". But according to what? I partially read it to find out that it was written by a professional from a certain culture and written for a certain culture. None of the top 10 new gTLDs listed in the article were of any interest to me: a French person. more

Potential Impacts of Large-Scale Metaverses on Internet Governance: Bandwidth

Neal Stephenson’s foundational cyberpunk novel Snow Crash brought to the public the concept of a metaverse, a virtual reality in which people interact using avatars in a manufactured ecosystem, eschewing the limitations of human existence. More recently, Ready Player One capitalized on that idea and brought it back to prominence with a bestselling novel and subsequent film adaptation. Amid rebranding efforts and seeking a new way forward, Mark Zuckerberg has made it Facebook’s (now Meta Platforms) priority to build a platform that could enable the metaverse to become a mainstream technology with the sort of reach that their social networks and WhatsApp have. more

Donuts Completes the Acquisition of Afilias

Donuts stated today that it has completed the acquisition of Afilias announced on November 19. Donuts' CEO Akram Atallah says the company is now ready to begin the integration plan promising minimal disruptions to customers. more

Bob Marley’s “WAILERS” Win Cybersquatting Lawsuit

Bob Marley's Wailers, who eventually became known simply as the "Wailers" after Bob Marley's death, successfully argued for dismissal of this cybersquatting and trademark infringement lawsuit brought by band members of another Wailers musical group who started using the band name 10 years before Bob Marley named his group in 1969... more

30 Years Ago Today, the Switch to TCP/IP Launched Today’s Internet

It was 30 years ago today, on January 1, 1983, that the ARPANET had a "flag day" when all connected systems switched from using the Network Control Protocol (NCP) to the protocols known as TCP/IP. This, then, gave rise to the network we now know as the Internet. more

After ICANN’s TLD Application System Glitch, Communication Is the Key

There were long faces all over the new gTLD ecosystem yesterday -- applicants, consultants and technical operators alike -- when ICANN took their Application System (TAS) offline and announced that it would not be brought back up for 5 days. As a result, the long-anticipated close of the first new gTLD application window was pushed back from April 12 to April 20, 23:59 UTC. You could almost hear the groans of dismay spreading over social cyberspace! more

Kodak Announces a Blockchain Platform Initiative for Image Rights Management

Kodak today revealed the launch of a blockchain-based platform called KODAKOne which is aimed to empower photographers and agencies to take greater control of image rights management. more

Does ICANN’s New Proposed Budget Harm Competition?

Despite the stated commitment to meeting their obligations to the government, ICANN's proposed budget may potentially breach the MoU. Specifically, the MoU commits ICANN to "perform as an organization founded on the principles of competition..." However, an alliance of at least 50 Registrars claims that the new Registrar fee structure contained in the proposed budget would significantly harm competition.  more

Let’s Face Facts: We Need a New Industrial Internet

The Internet is a great success and an abject failure. We need a new and better one. Let me explain why. We are about to enter an era when online services are about to become embedded into pretty much every activity in life. We will become extremely dependent on the safe and secure functioning of the underlying infrastructure. Whole new industries are waiting to be born as intelligent machines, widespread robotics, and miniaturized sensors are everywhere. more

GoDaddy Lists Controversial ‘.sucks’ Domain: Brands Advised to Bolster Monitoring

The '.sucks Top Level Domain (TLD), by Vox Populi, which initially faced criticism from brands due to its launch fee of $2,499 is now listed on the world's largest domain registrar, GoDaddy. more

Ten SpaceX Starlink Updates

Starlink now has nearly 500,000 users and is available in 32 countries and nine languages. It is either available, wait-listed, or coming soon in every nation except Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela. There are now 15,000 Starlink terminals in Ukraine with service throughout the nation through connections to ground stations in Poland, Lithuania, and Turkey and they have made a significant contribution in the war with Russia. more

PayPal Sells X.com Back to Its Previous Owner, Elon Musk

PayPal's corporate communications director confirmed that the company has sold the domain X.com back to its previous owner, Elon Musk. more

Triple Challenge of Network Transformation

Following my comments about the iPhone VoLTE announcement I had an interesting conversation with Andy Huckridge from Gigamon, a company that provides intelligent traffic visibility networking solutions for enterprises, datacentres and service providers around the globe. An interesting concept that we discussed was the 'triple challenge of network transformation'. The three elements of this challenge are... more

Russian-Speaking MoneyTaker Group Suspected of Stealing $10M From Companies in Russia, UK and US

According to report today, Russian-speaking hackers called MoneyTaker, are suspected of stealing nearly $10m by removing overdraft limits on debit cards and taking money from cash machines. more

How the End of IPv4 Affects Email and Hosting

Anyone who has been watching the technology industry for more than a couple of years quickly learns to recognize FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. FUD is (apparently) widely believed to be an effective marketing technique, especially when it comes to security, privacy, or scarcity. But the FUD often falls flat. Scarcity, in particular, is rare on the internet -- even rarer than privacy or security. There's constant FUD about scarcity of bandwidth, but the pipes get upgraded. Attempts to impose artificial scarcity through paywalls or other devices inevitably fail in the face of free alternatives. Even the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, which have indeed run out at the top, hasn't affected end users at the bottom yet -- and probably won't, for a long time. more